Premier League
IT’S 15 YEARS SINCE THE GLAZERS’ £790M BUY-OUT OF MANCHESTER UNITED: RUNNING OR RUINING THE CLUB?
The Glazer family has never been ones for the details of running Manchester United.
When he first arrived at Old Trafford with his two brothers 15 years ago, behind the tinted glass of a Volkswagen people carrier, Joel Glazer grabbed the first products he could lay his hands on in the club store — a £27 blue away shirt plus a few ‘I love Man United‘ T-shirts — and rushed off for his next engagement.
His brother, Avie, went for an £18 plastic United rucksack.
It was something Joel said the following day in the Old Trafford International Lounge after gathering 550 staff — from the tea ladies to chief executive David Gill — for a 15-minute briefing which proved prophetic in light of all that has followed.
‘Our view is that this club has such a rich history and tradition that we’re not looking to change,’ declared Joel who, like Avie, their brother Bryan and late father Malcolm, has refused any media interviews about United from that day until this.
Concerns that the Glazers would bleed the club dry of transfer market investment after their £790million leveraged buy-out have proved spectacularly unfounded. Gill’s successor Ed Woodward has presided over a bigger outlay than Paris Saint-Germain in the past five years.
It is the Glazers’ absentee status and neglect — an indifference to any suggestion that the club might need to change — which has proved so devastating when fellow Americans Fenway Sports Group (FSG) have delivered such impressive strategic oversight down the M62 at Liverpool.
There were certainly grounds to leave things alone when Gill and Sir Alex Ferguson navigated the ship in the first eight years of Glazer command.
Consider, for example, the legendary quiz nights at the team hotel which always took place on the eve of European away matches.
Set by the club photographer John Peters, they were monumentally competitive, with Nicky Butt and Roy Keane incandescent with rage if they felt they had been wrongly denied points.
They reflected the extraordinarily tight nature of a club in which everyone understood the question-master’s sometimes obscure references to British life and culture.
It was around 2008, when the team become more multi-national and some players did not understand the questions, that the quizzes were faded out.
The decision-making processes were supremely tight back then, too. At 8am every Friday, Gill would meet Ferguson at the Carrington training ground for the weekly meeting at which gaps in the squad and ongoing conversations about targets would be discussed. Football success is about judgment and they all trusted each other.
Jim Lawlor, the chief scout, ambled into Ferguson’s office one day to say it had struck him that Henrik Larsson’s season at Helsingborg was about to finish and he might be a stop-gap solution to the temporary problem of an injury to Louis Saha. ‘We’ll do it,’ said Ferguson. He and Gill always acted decisively.
The Glazers’ decision to allow Ferguson and Gill — the brains trust of Manchester United — to leave in the same summer said everything about what happens when owners are semi-detached.
If Woodward had operated with Ferguson for a few years, the outcome may have been very different. He and Gill had mapped things in such a way that the club only liked to make one or two changes each year.
But the managerial revolving door since Ferguson left has brought coaches with no time for many of the players they have inherited — particularly Jose Mourinho — and left Woodward constantly shipping them in and out in big numbers while lacking the football knowledge to cope.
There are occasional chinks of light. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s last summer transfer window was arguably United’s best since Ferguson stepped down. But the emergency stop-gap striker Odion Ighalo, who has spent the past three years in China, on £165,000-a-week wages — was a far cry from Larsson.
The deal asked questions about what on earth United’s player acquisition system has come to. Woodward, a physicist, is a great believer in data. He likes to throw resources at decisions and be presented with empirical evidence — numbers — as to why a player should be signed.
Part of the expanded United scouting system is the creation of a battery of reports on virtually every player. There can be too much information, say some who know United well.
Gill, an economist, tended to apply science to the real world, as individuals in that profession often do. There would be an element of human judgment.
For Woodward’s Radamel Falcao, read Gill and Ferguson’s calamitous Bebe, the unknown signed in 2010. Both players are thought to have been hired after deadline-day phone calls from Jorge Mendes. Falcao was only marginally the better.
Yet the Glazers appear utterly oblivious to the fact the club is listing and lacks direction, while FSG have inserted Bostonian Mike Gordon — a significant figure at Anfield — and British-American Peter Moore.
United are torn between wanting to send a message to the market that they will not overpay and a need to spend.
They waited an entire window to buy Bruno Fernandes from Sporting Lisbon and ended up getting him for the same price they would have paid in the first place.
The same fearful decision-making applied to the signing of Harry Maguire.
When Liverpool were thwarted in their attempt to buy Virgil van Dijk from Southampton, they simply went back later and upped the offer by £15m — and got their man. They know what their priorities are and act accordingly.
To owners with a modicum of curiosity, Woodward’s track record would now be coming under scrutiny. He did sharpen up the commercial operation when he took charge. But, contrary to popular belief, it is group managing director Richard Arnold, not Woodward, who has been bringing in noodle sponsors and myriad other deals which have made United a fortune.
A broader, more strategic perspective would also tell the ruling dynasty that Woodward has presided over Old Trafford becoming an aged, careworn place, in desperate need of upgrade and renewal at a time when Arsenal’s and Tottenham’s arenas place them miles ahead.
The technically challenging expansion of Anfield is something FSG have applied themselves to and the stadium is hugely enhanced.
Now is the point of greatest opportunity to install a director of football. There will not be the kind of opposition from Solskjaer that a signature managerial appointee like Mauricio Pochettino would present in a quest for power and authority.
Delegating responsibility to a board director who knows the game would also give Woodward greater justification for retaining the services of Solskjaer, who has struggled.
These are decisions for the invisible men who took the club over, but no one is expecting a revolution.
After that souvenir hunt in 2005, the brothers beat a hasty retreat through the Old Trafford North Stand door, squealing off up Sir Matt Busby Way minutes later in the people carrier.
At that point, Sir Bobby Charlton ambled out into the sunshine, where he was accosted by fans deeply concerned about what the future might hold with the Glazers. ‘I don’t expect we’ll see much of them,’ he said.
-Daily Mail
Premier League
Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
Liverpool beat Crystal Palace 1-0 to remain top of the Premier League as Arsenal and Manchester City came from behind to win on Saturday.
City were 3-2 victors over Fulham to stay one point behind Liverpool, alongside Arsenal who saw off Southampton 3-1.
Arne Slot has now won nine of his first 10 games since succeeding Jurgen Klopp as Liverpool manager, but was frustrated that the visitors invited a late onslaught from the winless Eagles.
Jota prodded the Reds into the lead from Cody Gakpo’s cross on nine minutes.
The Portuguese international was then guilty of missing two big chances to extend Liverpool’s advantage.
Palace failed to make them pay, but victory came at a cost for Slot as goalkeeper Alisson Becker limped off with a hamstring injury.
“If you score the second you break them mentally,” said Slot. “All the fans kept believing in a result because it was only 1-0, even though in my opinion we were the dominant team.”
Fresh from a dominant win over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, Arsenal were expected to sweep aside winless Southampton.
But the Saints shocked the Emirates 10 minutes into the second half when Cameron Archer fired in his first Premier League goal since a summer move from Aston Villa.
The lead only lasted three minutes before Kai Havertz scored for the seventh consecutive home game.
Gabriel Martinelli was introduced after an hour and took just eight minutes to make his mark with a finish on the volley from Bukayo Saka’s cross.
Having set up Arsenal’s first two goals, Saka pounced on a loose ball to score the third himself.
Fulham’s outrageous opener
Rodri’s season-long absence due to a serious knee injury is expected to be a major blow to City’s chances of retaining the title for a fifth consecutive season.
But it was the Spaniard’s deputy Mateo Kovacic who scored twice to turn the game around for the champions at the Etihad.
The visitors had not lost since the opening night of the season at Manchester United and led thanks to Andreas Pereira’s finish from an outrageous backheel assist by Raul Jimenez.
Kovacic’s deflected effort quickly brought City level before a cleaner strike less than two minutes into the second half made it 2-1.
Jeremy Doku then smashed into the top corner from outside the box to give City a two-goal cushion, which they needed.
Rodrigo Muniz gave Fulham hope on 88 minutes, but City held out for a 17th consecutive win against the Cottagers.
West Ham eased the pressure on new boss Julen Lopetegui by ending a run of three home defeats to start the new season.
Michail Antonio, Mohammed Kudus, Jarrod Bowen and Lucas Paqueta struck for the Hammers in a 4-1 win over Ipswich, who are still waiting for their first Premier League win 22 years.
There were six goals before half-time as Brentford beat Wolves 5-3 to leave the visitors still rooted to the foot of the table.
Leicester secured their first league win of the season as Facundo Buonanotte’s strike beat Bournemouth 1-0.
Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag faces a huge match if he is to remain in charge when the Red Devils visit Aston Villa in the pick of Sunday’s action.
-AFP
Premier League
Premier League rejects City request to delay next season’s games after Club World Cup
The Premier League has rejected Manchester City’s request to postpone the first two games of the 2025-26 season to help the players recover after their FIFA Club World Cup campaign in the U.S., the club’s manager Pep Guardiola said on Friday.
City and Chelsea are the two English clubs who have qualified for the expanded month-long Club World Cup set to start on June 15. The Premier League’s season will begin in August.
An increasingly packed soccer calendar has been a concern among a growing number of players and managers. A report by global players’ union FIFPRO said some players get only 12% of the year to rest.
The Premier League did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
City midfielder Rodri said in September that players could be close to strike action over the time they are required to play. A knee ligament injury has since put him out for the season.
“I don’t know if we will play more games than the treble year (2022-23)… maybe we’ll play less games,” Guardiola told reporters.
“The Premier League has not allowed us to postpone the first two games for our recovery. Thank you so much. They don’t postpone these games so that will be the moment of, oh, what do we have to do?”
He said the Club World Cup will make it even more difficult for clubs to manage player workload.
-Reuters
Premier League
Ten Hag’s Man United future not my call, Ratcliffe says
Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe said a decision about under-fire manager Erik ten Hag is not his call, and was reticent about whether he still has faith in the team’s boss amid their worst start to the Premier League season since 1986-87.
“I don’t want to answer that question,” Ratcliffe told the BBC. “I like Erik. I think he’s a very good coach but at the end of the day it’s not my call, it’s the management team that’s running Manchester United that have to decide how we best run the team in many different respects.
“That team that’s running Manchester United has only been together since June or July. They weren’t there in January, February, March or April — Omar (Berrada, CEO), (Sporting Director) Dan Ashworth — they only arrived in July.
“They’ve only been there . . . you can count it in weeks almost — they’ve not been there a long time so they need to take stock and make some sensible decisions.”
Ten Hag’s job was the subject of speculation for much of last season en route to the team’s lowest Premier League finish of eighth. After an FA Cup final victory over Manchester City and an end-of-season review, however, Ten Hag signed a new contract to extend his stay at Old Trafford until 2026.
“Our objective is very clear, we want to take Manchester United back to where it should be, and it’s not there yet, obviously, that’s very clear,” Ratcliffe said.
Ten Hag continues to plead for patience from fans with the team languishing 13th in the Premier League table, having lost three of their six opening games. They were headed towards defeat by Porto in the Europa League on Thursday before Harry Maguire scored a last-gasp goal to salvage a 3-3 draw.
-Reuters
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